CEA Food Safety Coalition details first indoor-farming standards
Inspired by rising food safety concerns after the 2018 Thanksgiving romaine recalls, the CEA Food Safety Coalition is launching the first-ever food safety certification program specifically designed for indoor-grown leafy greens.
“The new standard champions CEA-grown produce as a critical component of safe and secure domestic food supply, especially in times of business disruption as experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Marni Karlin, executive director of the CEA Food Safety Coalition, said in a news release.
Controlled Environment Agriculture, or CEA, has exploded with investment and sales the last few years, as more urban, indoor farms crop up to meet demand.
Soon after organizing in 2019, the coalition educated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration about the limited risk of contamination from indoor-produced leafy greens, Karlin said.
“During the Thanksgiving 2019 romaine recall, those government agencies were transparent that CEA leafy greens were safe and did not extend the recall to them. This enabled retailers to keep CEA-produced greens on the shelves and consumers to safely buy CEA leafy greens for their families,” she said in the release.
The team had to create a standard that made sense across the board for the variety of production processes included in CEA — from greenhouses and vertical farming to aeroponic, hydroponic and aquaponic.
“Current food safety standards were written for the field, and many don't adequately address the unique attributes of controlled indoor environments,” Karlin said in the release. “Traditional food-safety risk profiles associated with conventional farming include examining the physical hazards and microbial hazards from water use, herbicide and pesticide use, and impact from animals and animal byproducts. These do not impact CEA growers in the same way, if at all.”
As a result, a separate set of guidelines is needed.
This new certification process and the accompanying on-pack seal will spread awareness about CEA and unify these growers while differentiating them from traditional field growers, she said.
“It will allow producers to adhere to a standard tailored to indoor production and give incoming entrepreneurs guidance on the measures they'll need to meet to align with the existing industry,” Karlin said in the release.
The certification program is available to all CEA food safety coalition members for a small fee, and an external audit to the standard must be completed on an annual basis.
Growers are assessed across four key areas:
- Hazard analysis: All potential hazards associated with a producer’s practices, including use of water, nutrients, growing media, seeds, inputs and site control;
- Water: Often used by CEA producers, recirculated water requires a continuing hazard analysis throughout its life cycle and zone-based environmental monitoring based on company-specific risk assessment, she said;
- Site control: All food contact surfaces and adjacent food contact surfaces, including plant containers, must be considered and associated with potential farm physical hazards, including lighting, robotics, sensors, equipment and utensils; and
- Pesticide and herbicide use: Even though CEA-produced greens generally don’t use pesticides or herbicides, this module evaluates the potential risk of pesticide contamination and addresses if residue testing is required, she said.
“Consumer interest in food labels is high and shows a genuine desire to shop smarter,” Karlin said. “For consumers to truly make informed purchasing decisions, we need to explain what the labels mean, the process of certification and which labels they can trust.”
